The Volokh Conspiracy

One assumes, as I did, that the golden fiddle is both magical and cursed, and that playing it will lead to inevitable troubles or damnation for Johnny. Heads the Devil wins, tails Johnny loses.

Jacob mostly captures it. I thought the list was lacking; clearly, Johnny was an idiot, or at least bad at negotiation.

In the absurdly literal department, to answer McSweeny's question #24: Doesn't the metallic surface of a golden fiddle create an unpalatably tinny sound as opposed to the nice resonant sound on a wooden instrument?, I can say from personal experience that the answer is, probably not.

I once had the pleasure of visiting the Haynes Flute Company in Boston; in a display case in the president's office was an aluminum violin made by Mr. Haynes, the original founder of the company. When I asked the president how it sounded, he took it out of the case, tuned it up an played it for us. The sound, while certainly not up to the quality of a Stradivarius, was not at all bad. Gold, being a somewhat softer metal (and a whole lot heavier, but let's not quibble) would probably have an even better sound.

I work with an oilfield eauipment engineer here in Houston who is an incredibly talented fiddler and is in a band that plays down at the Pecos Grill. He plays this every night the band plays there--even faster than the Charlie Daniels version! His rendition will have you jumping in your chair like an overexcited six-year-old.

I asked him one time who he thought really won, and he says the Devil's part is really more difficult than Johnny's, if you play both properly. Johnny's is just faster.